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Wednesday, 8 November 2017

Lebanon Next in US War on Middle East

US politicians, policymakers and commentators insist that the United
States military's involvement in Syria and Iraq is solely aimed at
defeating militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS). However, it
is abundantly clear that before the Russian intervention in Syria in
2015, the United States was engaged in a proxy war against Damascus, not
IS and that as the Russian intervention began rolling IS back and the
organization clung to existence, Washington found itself revising its
narrative around a new pretext to remain in the region, the "Iranian
threat

Geopolitical analysts have long-warned that regime change in Tehran was
always America's ultimate goal and that the conflicts ignited across the
Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) was a means of reorganizing
the Arab World into a united front against Tehran and its allies and in
turn, against Moscow and Beijing.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday promoted a Trump
administration goal of uniting Saudi Arabia and Iraq in common cause to
counter Iran's growing assertiveness in the Middle East.Tillerson
participated in the inaugural meeting of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq
Coordination Committee, along with Saudi King Salman and Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi, telling the leaders that the event highlighted
the improving ties between the longtime rivals and showed "the great
potential" for further cooperation. He noted the August reopening of a
major border crossing and the resumption of direct flights between
Riyadh and Baghdad.

Attempts by the US to virtually seize control of Iraq's western Anbar governorate
to provide a safe haven for militants now on the losing half of an
emerging regional balance of power is an indicator that steps are
already being taken toward what is in all intents and purposes an
escalation, not a withdrawal from the Middle East by the US.

Riyadh's attempts to depict itself as undertaking socioeconomic reforms
and its claimed intentions of abandoning its longstanding abuse of Islam
through its politically-motivated Wahhabi interpretations appears to be
little more than a means of assuaging fears of regional and global
partners that Washington and Riyadh's dangerous game of using
state-sponsored terrorism as a geopolitical tool has spiraled out of
control costing all involved credibility and even stability.

War with Iran, Via Lebanon

Additionally, the US seeks to pursue conflict along yet another familiar
axis, through war between Israel and Lebanon and more specifically
Hezbollah.

While the article portrays a "third Lebanon war" as inevitable,
precipitated by Hezbollah and its sponsors in Tehran's aggression
against Israel, careful reading and consideration of recent history
exposes the editorial as an attempt to create the pretext upon which the
US and its allies will provoke this war, not Hezbollah, and not Iran.

The article claims:

Neither Iran nor Hezbollah have any remotely credible reason for
their enmity of Israel today — yet they are engaged in an implacable
campaign of deadly hatred animated by their version of radical Islam.
Hezbollah additionally has to explain to the Lebanese population it
claims to represent why it has been killing Muslims in Syria at a
furious pace. The best way to close this credibility gap is to attack
Israel. Both Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s rhetoric,
and his terrorist operatives’ actions on the border with Israel confirm
this.

Nowhere in the article is it noted Israel's participation in the Syrian
conflict, its own state sponsorship of terrorism in neighboring Syria
including militants from Jabhat Al Nusra, a US State Department and UK
Home Office proscribed terrorist organization, Israel's contributions to
US-Kurdish proxies in northern Syria and Iraq and multiple Israel
provocations aimed at Iran itself, including the sabotaging of its
infrastructure with the Stuxnet computer virus. All of these are more
than credible reasons for Iran and Hezbollah's enmity of Israel.

And while the article attempts to portray Hezbollah
and Iran as poised to strike Israel, it admits that it will be merely
"capabilities" either possess that will prompt Israel to "take drastic
action to protect its civilian population."

In other words, it will be a replay of the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon War in
which a minor provocation was used by Tel Aviv to wage full scale war on
Lebanon including aerial bombardment and a disastrous land invasion
that ended in retreat before reaching the Litani River, its stated
objective.

Beyond setting the stage for a potential repeat of the 2006 war, the
article also suggests this artificial increase in tensions be
accompanied by increased pressure on Hezbollah and Iran, pressure the US
and its allies are already applying.

It should be noted that elsewhere, US policymakers have stated multiple
times that before war with Iran can be pursued directly, both Syria and
Hezbollah must be weakened first. A war with Lebanon thus could be a
means to either directly lead into direct conflict with Tehran, or as a
means of preparing for one in the near or intermediate future.

Immediate Peace and Stability vs. Constant and Perpetual War

What is clear is that the 2015 Russian intervention in Syria along with
Iran's growing influence in the region has rolled back attempts by the
US and its partners to reassert control over the Middle East they have
sought since the Cold War. With a new multipolar coalition of emerging
regional and global powers, US dreams of hegemony will be increasingly
more difficult to achieve with no single "superpower" to topple in order
to gain an upper hand.

For governments everywhere from Beruit to Amman and even Riyadh and its
Persian Gulf neighbors, the choice of whether to go down this
increasingly violent path in pursuit of increasingly distant hegemony
Washington has promised them the spoils of, or to constructively embrace
multipolarism by pursuing regional stability is fast approaching.

For the US, the threats it has used to coerce some of its more unwilling
partners are quickly being dwarfed by the consequences of their
complicity. Additionally, with nothing but perpetual war on the horizon
as the "plan" to achieve US hegemony in the region, even if Washington
succeeded, it will be only after its regional proxies endure years more
of dangerous conflict. Nations like Saudi Arabia, mired in conflict in
Yemen to the south while its proxies in Syria and Iraq are wiped off the
battlefield, walks a dangerous tightrope other nations would be wise to
avoid.

Lebanon has been a battlefield in the past the US has used as a vector
toward greater regional conflict. Its ability or inability to create
conflict there again, directly or through Israel, and that conflict's
ability or inability to drag Iran, Syria and other players in directly,
will determine the outlook for America's wider agenda in the region.